


put you in a mirror

by van1lla_v1lla1n



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: Light Angst, M/M, Oral Sex, Recreational Drug Use, Semi-public masturbation, Shotgunning, Smoking, Smut, Snowballing, The Missing Hours, Voyeurism, brief mention of mild self-harm, circa s2 ep7 Return, implicit Shiv/Tom, obligatory tomgreg boss/employee and infidelity and shitty marriage tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:48:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27785506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/van1lla_v1lla1n/pseuds/van1lla_v1lla1n
Summary: Tom had been plagued for weeks by this awful self-loathing malaise, made constantly aware of Shiv’s displeasure in their marriage, her apparently successful efforts to allay it with external sources. Watching Greg touch himself was a fucked-up replacement for the pleasure he couldn’t get himself, for the pleasure he couldn’t give Shiv.So he perched himself on the edge of Greg’s desk, inhaled Greg’s soft little sounds and his quiet little gasps, absorbed Greg’s pleasure as if it were at once his own pleasure and his punishment.in which Tom goes a little too far with the hypermasculine dominance plays, and Greg is into it, actually.
Relationships: Greg Hirsch/Tom Wambsgans
Comments: 19
Kudos: 62
Collections: The Missing Hours: 3–5 a.m. on the night of March 12





	put you in a mirror

**Author's Note:**

> another submission for the Tom Wamb Jerk-Off and Dirty-Talk Cringe™️ Collection

One time. Greg had let Tom take him out to a nice dinner _one time_ , had let Tom pick out for him one pair of office-appropriate shoes, and after that Tom couldn’t stop himself buying Greg all kinds of things. Things he would’ve once bought for Shiv, but that he knew would end up forgotten in a dresser drawer or reappear on their cleaning person or Mondale’s dogsitter.

He bought Greg monogrammed shirts, cologne, gentle acid tonics for his perpetually dumbfounded, angelic face, as if Greg would know how to use them or would bother to figure it out. He bought Greg shiny silver things—a bracelet here, a watch there—never anything so formal as a ring, obviously, and never anything as nice as what he’d buy for a real Roy.

Tom had always gotten this thrill from giving gifts—from saying, with the newfound well of money he’d gained access to, _I like you, but I need you to like me before I can love you._ Of course that wasn’t the message with Greg—with Greg the message was more like, _I like you, but I need you to trust me before I can trust you._

He needed Greg’s trust in this inexplicably deep way, needed someone to value his choices, his taste. And so he insinuated himself into the most intimate parts of Greg’s life, joking and buying and domineering himself into Greg’s desk and closet and bedside table.

He bought Greg the most luxurious lube he could find. Greg blushed furiously when Tom stood in his office and shoved the matte black box into his hand, and for the first time amid all these purchases Tom found himself fumbling for an excuse.

“I bought it for me,” he said. “But—but Shiv is allergic.”

“Wait, is this—you’ve, like, used it already?”

“No! God, Greg, no. Don’t be disgusting. She just read the label, you know? She’s not an idiot.”

“Right, okay. What if I’m allergic too, though, you know?”

Tom rolled his eyes. “You’re not, Greg.”

“Okay, but I’m just, like, I’m not sure how—”

“What—you’re not sure how to use it? What do you normally use, Greg? Spit? Some senior citizen store-brand fucking foot cream? Fucking Cetaphil? Do you need a tutorial, Greg? Let me show you how the grownups do it.” He reached for the box, but Greg’s hand tightened around it, and Tom pulled back.

“Tom, like, I know—I know how to use lube. It’s just, it’s just lube?”

“Yeah, Greg, it’s just fucking lube. Why don’t you show me then, if you’re such a pornstar?”

For a moment Tom couldn’t believe that had just come out of his mouth. Honestly he felt that way a lot, but more often it was with a jolt of shame afterward that he’d learned to wince away. This time, though, the disbelief took on more of a resigned optimism: _Might as fucking well._ So he just stared Greg down, one eyebrow raised, until Greg seemed to realize he wasn’t going to take it back.

After that Greg moved like he was in a well of honey, sitting down behind his desk and swiveling his chair away from the door so slowly, as if Tom would at any second burst out laughing and say he was fucking with him. His eyes took on a syrupy glaze as he unzipped his pants, staring up at Tom with this terrified awe, and he licked his lower lip as he took out his cock, seeming almost coy in his nervousness.

He held his cock covered in one hand and fumbled with the little box on his desk with the other, until Tom scoffed and snatched it away and tucked the open bottle back into his hand. Tom stood on the other side of the desk and tried to look casual, even though he felt like he was leering, leaning over the desk like a fucking pervert.

“So how is it, Greg?”

“How’s—what?”

“The _lube_ , Greg?” As if that’s what this was about. “Better than Cetaphil, yeah?”

“I mean, I’ve never used—but, yeah. Yeah, it’s better.”

“Is it slick?”

Greg choked, this high, disbelieving, gasping sound.

“Tell me how it is, Greg. I buy you this expensive gift and you can’t even tell me whether you like it? Do you know how much that shit cost?”

“Yeah, it’s—uh, it’s slick. It’s very . . . emollient? It’s nice, Tom. I can tell that it cost, perhaps, a lot of money?” Tom gazed down at Greg’s hand, which had slowed, revealing longer lingering glimpses of his cock. Tom forced his mouth shut, forced his eyes back up to Greg’s face.

“Good. Whatever. Get on with it then,” he said.

“Oh, you want me to, like—?”

“Yeah, Greg. Go ahead and blow that load, buddy. And chop chop about it, I’ve got a meeting.” He saw Greg’s eyes squeeze shut just before Greg’s sped-up movements caught his gaze again.

The sudden concentrated set of Greg’s face, an expression Tom rarely saw from him, gave the situation an even more voyeuristic air. This was _Greg_ , more naked than Tom had ever seen him in either face or body. When Greg came, sooner than Tom expected, Tom watched his mouth hang open, tongue forming silent syllables behind his teeth, and noticed that the deep pink blush on his lips was the same color that ghosted over the head of his erection.

Tom skedaddled quick. “You’ve got your very own lap of luxury now, Greg,” he said, and Greg stuttered out a still-breathless _thanks?_

Greg’s mouth haunted him after that. Tom was desperate to see that color again on his lips, on his dick. It kept him up at night. He got stiffies under his desk, staring emptyheaded at his computer screen, thinking about Greg sitting just down the hall, probably chewing prole-like on the end of a shitty plastic pen. He gave himself tiny round bruises when he went out to eat with Greg, pinching his thigh under the table so he’d stop fixating on Greg’s mouth when he talked.

Tom had forbidden Greg smoking during the workday—the stench was too fucking much in the office. But he found himself looking for excuses to go down with Greg at the end of the day, when he often had a cigarette standing on the curb, just so he could stare at Greg’s long fingers framing his mouth.

“You are actively rotting your lungs,” Tom told him. “Think of your breath, Greg. That stench sinks into your teeth.”

“I, like, brush my teeth, man. It’s fine,” he said, every word a tiny pale cloud.

The lube trial had been a one-time thing, Tom told himself, just a single-use power move, reminding Greg of his place. But then Greg did something so stupid—he sent out, with Tom’s signature, the unfinished draft version of a memo Tom had tasked him to distribute, making Tom look like he had the communication skills of a fucking baboon.

Tom got the email and stomped down to Greg’s office, found him chewing nervously on a pen, and before Tom could think better of it he was shutting the office door behind him. It felt like sealing the envelope that held his signed prenup.

He’d been plagued for weeks by this awful self-loathing malaise, made constantly aware of Shiv’s displeasure in their marriage, her apparently successful efforts to allay it with external sources. Watching Greg touch himself was a fucked-up replacement for the pleasure he couldn’t get himself, for the pleasure he couldn’t give Shiv. Not being able to touch his partners was apparently his lot in life; maybe it was time he accepted that.

So he perched himself on the edge of Greg’s desk, inhaled Greg’s soft little sounds and his quiet little gasps, absorbed Greg’s pleasure as if it were at once his own pleasure and his punishment. Tom’s hands ached to touch, so he folded his fists into his elbows, arms tense across his chest.

Afterward, he locked himself in the bathroom and glared at himself in the mirror, lying to his own face that he wouldn’t touch himself. He did it anyway, picturing Greg’s open mouth and the sinuous, bony circle of his hand around his cock. His orgasm was a pathetic spurt, the wrenching need in his gut replaced readily by nausea. He washed his hands, splashed cold water on his face, and looked in the mirror and told himself it would never happen again.

* * *

Greg’s dick developed a Pavlovian response to Tom’s insults. Tom called him a cocksock in the middle of a meeting and he got hard just at the word—at the possibility that Tom might shadow him into his office afterward and lock the door behind him and hover in front of his desk, watching open-mouthed as Greg stroked himself furiously and tried not to spurt cum all over his dress clothes.

But that’s exactly what happened.

It had become a pattern: Tom called Greg some bitingly inane epithet over an innocuous mistake. Greg blushed, apologized, and they glanced at each other furtively, compulsively, until Greg hurried out at the end of the meeting, shamefully relieved to hear Tom right behind him in the hall. He sat behind his desk, looking up at Tom like he was waiting for his next official task, until Tom gritted his teeth and told him to take his dick out and that was that.

It really shouldn’t have been hot, having his boss stand in his office and leer at him while he masturbated. It was basically sexual harassment, right? At least according to the workplace training he’d clicked through. But it didn’t fucking feel like harassment.

Even if Tom saw it as a dominance thing, which Greg assumed he did, Greg wasn’t at all certain that it was Tom who was actually in control of the situation. Tom tried to act all stoic, but Greg saw the way his broad hands clenched into fists when Greg left his mouth open for even a second longer than strictly necessary, the way Tom couldn’t keep his pale blue eyes off his dick.

And so what if he took advantage of that, in ways he hoped were innocent enough that Tom wouldn’t notice: changing the pace of his strokes to see if Tom would get distracted, letting himself make the quietest sounds he could manage, whimpers that in any other circumstance Greg would’ve found mortifying. But with flared nostrils and clenched jaw Tom confirmed that he found them, somehow, sexy.

Tom called him revolting when he chewed on his pens or smoked after work, but Greg saw the way Tom’s focus was glued on his mouth when he said it. And so what if he did it more often, just to see Tom’s reaction each time? If Tom ever called him on it he’d just tell him the truth, or part of it: going out for a smoke gave him the chance to clear his head.

He didn’t need to mention that he was clearing his head of Tom, the way Tom touched him so casually, like it was nothing, and then folded his arms up tight while he watched Greg jerk off, like even the possibility of touching him accidentally was unbearably disgusting. He didn’t need to mention that he chewed on his pens to keep himself from saying something stupid, like asking Tom when they could schedule their next rendezvous, or how exactly this fit into Tom’s marriage, or if Tom maybe liked it, actually—perhaps in fact _liked_ looking at his dick?

Greg had slipped, once, had looked up at Tom with his cock stiff in his hand and swallowed hard and said, “Do you, uh, would you want to—also?”

Tom had just laughed him off with that crude, cruel bark. “What do you think this is, Greg, some kind of buddy-buddy twofer jerkoff? No. Get on with it. Get your rocks off so I can get the fuck out of here.” He crossed his arms even tighter across his chest, drawing his jacket taut across his shoulders, around the inexplicable muscle of his upper arms.

So Greg had shut up and gotten on with it. But he chewed his pens and smoked more feverishly than ever, like he’d been infected with Tom’s inability to control his physical impulses, despite his impeccably polished façade. Just as Tom had infected him with the virus of knowledge about the Cruises malfeasance.

* * *

“I just think, like, this isn’t quite fair to me?” Greg said, when Tom told him he needed his collateral Cruises papers back. “And I'm just wondering if there's perhaps something we could discuss, you know, as reassurance that it's actually a good deal?”

Tom stepped up to get in his face. “Well, what can I offer you, Greg? You need some fucking soothing? Why don’t you let me soothe you?” Tom knew this was getting out of bounds; there was no clause for _soothing_ , for any exchange with even a hint of mutual advantage, in their unspoken agreement.

“What, like, touching my head? Because I already paid—”

“No, Greg. Not your head.” Tom gestured vaguely. “See what I’m saying?”

Greg had seemed flustered, but he said, “No. No, I don’t think I do, actually?”

“A handy job, Greg, Jesus. I’ll jerk you off. Yeah? That soothing enough to quell your inequality qualms?” Tom had actually said that: _a handy job_ and _Greg_ in the same sentence. _I’ll jerk you off_. And now he had to stand here with that hanging quiet in the air between them, watching Greg’s mouth flounder inches from his face, trying to sort out whether Tom was razzing him or not. Tom wasn’t sure he knew the answer to that either.

 _Might as fucking well._ Tom took a deep breath, raised an eyebrow, cocked his chin, said, “Well?”

Greg looked above Tom’s head, over at his renewal party guests clustered on the couch. He glanced back down at Tom, nodded once, solemnly enough that Tom snickered, and said, “Fine.”

He brushed past Tom to sit back down with his guests. There was an empty seat on the couch next to him, but Tom sat down in a chair across from him instead. Greg was fidgety, avoiding Tom’s gaze, and Tom was thriving, watching Greg be so awkward around these yuppie fucks, for all he was trying to act out a well-adjusted high class. Nothing like a little schadenfreude to calm the nerves.

Greg stood up to get something from the kitchen, and Tom followed him in after an inconspicuous minute. Greg jumped when Tom slid his hand along his lower back, stepping up next to him at the counter.

Tom laughed at him. “Don’t make it weird, Greg.”

Greg looked up, eyes wide and brow furrowed, whispered furiously, “Don’t make it _weird_ , Tom? You show up at my party uninvited and sit there, like, appraising me and chuckling to yourself and making fun of my friends, and you tell _me_ not to make it weird?”

“I’m fucking with you, Greg. Do you want me to hide out in your bedroom instead? I wouldn’t want to throw a wrench in your neat little fête.”

“I—my bedroom? Why would— _no._ No. Just stay out here. Alright?”

“We can call off the deal, Greg, if it’s making you nervous.”

“I’m not. I’m not nervous. Fuck you, Tom.”

“Fuck _you_ , Greg. Ease off or I’ll rescind my offer.”

Greg just clenched his jaw, shook his head in frustration, and lumbered back out into the living room. Tom opened cabinets until he found Greg’s paltry liquor stash, poured himself a shot of the least awful thing.

His heart was pounding and he hated it. This was a fucking power move, that’s all—one more way to assert his superiority over Greg. He just hadn’t expected Greg to go along with it. He hadn’t expected the twinge of panic he’d felt when he’d given Greg the chance to back out, hadn’t expected the unfurling of relief in his chest when Greg hadn’t taken him up on it.

He knocked back the shot, pasted a disaffected, self-satisfied smirk on his face, and went back out. Greg was just standing up from the couch, smoothing out his pants, starting to usher his guests out the door. Tom sat down in the emptying room, smiling blandly at the folks who waved their goodbyes at him. Then he reconsidered and hurried to catch Greg in the entryway just as he was shutting the door. Better to keep him on his toes.

Tom grasped Greg by the hips, crowded him face-first up against the door.

“Ready to get it on, buddy?” Tom said into his collar.

“ _Oh._ Oh, god.” Tom heard him swallow and slid his hands forward, above the waist of Greg’s pants, held him still with one hand on his waist, the other reaching for his belt. He stilled when Greg said, “Tom, maybe, uh—could we perhaps do this from, like, a seated position? My legs tend to lock up, you know, if I stand up too long?”

Fuck Greg, honestly, for trying to set the terms, but Tom didn’t want to seem desperate. He slapped the center of Greg’s back and pushed back, laughing.

“Whatever, you baby fucking giraffe. I’ll be on the couch. Go get your lube.”

“My . . . ? I, uh. I mean, okay. Right.”

Tom washed his hands in the kitchen sink, listening to Greg root through shit in his bedroom and mutter curses to himself. He let the water run hot over his hands, worrying they’d be clammy.

Greg came back with the lube in one hand and an old worker’s lunchbox in the other.

“Would you, uh, want a smoke?” he asked.

Tom squinted at him. “Is that a lunchbox?”

“Yeah, it was my grandpa’s. Pretty rad, huh?”

Tom snickered. “I’m sure he’d love to hear you’re using his heirloom to stash your drugs in.”

Greg shrugged, set the box on the coffee table, and sat down on the couch to load a little pipe of bright swirled glass. “He’d probably hate that less than me working for Uncle Logan. And you.”

“Snooty old prick,” Tom said, and shook his head when Greg held out the pipe toward him. “God, no. I can still feel the soot in my lungs from the joint I smoked in college.”

Greg set the pipe against his lower lip and paused; Tom looked away.

“There’s a way, like—we could, uh, make it easier on you. Your lungs. You know?” Tom stared at him, thinking there was no way Greg was suggesting what he thought he might be suggesting.

“Here. I can just—” Greg said, and Tom watched the tiny flame flicker across his face, watched the way his long fingers curled to hold the lighter and the pipe, almost clownishly small in his hands, like wildly inappropriate children’s toys. And then Greg was turning toward him, brow furrowed, and those fingers were grasping his chin, tilting his head, Greg’s lips sealing chaste to his and a burning breath pouring into his mouth.

Tom sat there like a teenage girl with the crush of a lifetime wondering if he should close his eyes or not. This was not a kiss. But it might be the closest thing he’d get, and he wasted the whole three seconds in a haze of panicked overthinking.

Greg pulled away and closed a hand over Tom’s mouth, fingertips brushing his cheekbone. “Inhale?” Greg said. “All the way. Like—yeah, like that—into your lungs.”

Tom slapped Greg’s hand off his face and burst out coughing. “Fuck, Greg. Are you trying to roast my fucking airway? Jesus Christ.” Greg was smirking and Tom resented it immensely.

“Alright, you’ve had your fun,” Tom said. “Get your dick out and let’s get the fuck on with it so I can sleep off the rest of my forced tenure in your stoner den. And turn sideways. I’m not blowing out my knees on the fucking floor for you.”

He shifted to let Greg lean back against the arm of the couch. When Tom turned toward him, hitching one knee up on the couch under Greg’s thigh, he realized his mistake: Greg was facing him now, looking straight at him with those docile cow eyes, and Tom would have to work to control his own face. It was already getting more difficult to remember to do that, with the weed breezing through his head and settling heavy in his limbs.

It almost felt natural, practiced, watching Greg unbuckle his belt, but Tom felt thrown by the change of scene, the quiet privacy, the warm press of his thigh under Greg’s. Tom was aware he touched Greg more often than was probably appropriate for a casual working relationship, but he’d made it a point to keep his body strictly to himself when Greg’s dick was out.

He turned off the part of his brain that second-guessed, the part that feared rejection more than shame, and blamed the weed for how easy it was to squeeze lube (the lube he had bought, he reminded himself) onto his fingers and to reach out and take Greg’s half-hard cock in his hand.

“Wow, buddy. You got a regular handful here, huh?” he said, stroking once, slow, and huffing out a quiet breath as he felt Greg’s erection thicken.

“I mean, it’s not like you haven’t seen it, dude.”

“Geez, get a little weed in your system and suddenly you’re Mr. Mouthy, huh?” Greg’s ability to look curiously into his face right then was more unnerving than Tom cared to admit, when he was having such a difficult time sorting out where he was supposed to be looking himself. Watching Greg’s face felt too intimate, but then so did watching his dick. So he just cycled his gaze between Greg’s face and his dick and various pieces of furniture with flighty, indecisive abandon.

Tom tested out a few slightly faster strokes, cringing at the obscene sound of lube on velvet skin. He started talking, desperate to cover it up.

“So what gets Cousin Greg’s rocks off? Huh? Some hipster yuppie with an MBA and a thrift-store infinity scarf? One of the Waystar office chickies in their little pencil skirts? Come on, Greg. Let’s get this dick going, yeah? Ooh, does the Talented Mr. Greg swing the other way? Do you sit in your cubicle and dream of hooking up with one of those stoner video-game streamers you’re always ‘secretly’ watching?”

Tom got distracted, shuffling through this codex he hadn’t realized he kept of all the people Greg might like to fuck. He’d let his hand slow almost to a caress, and he picked his pace back up.

“So which is it, Greg? Give a man a view into the illicit fantasies of a handsome young businessman.”

“Dude. Could we, like, not talk, maybe?” Greg asked.

“Ooh, somebody’s impatient, huh, Greg?”

“I just, like, I can’t focus on getting there? You know? It’s just distracting, all these other people you’re talking about? Like who are they? And with the weed too, it’s just not—it’s not the best combination, as far as focus goes,” Greg said, and Tom shook himself out of the weed-induced tunnel vision that led unerringly to Greg’s mouth.

“I’m not the one who wanted to toke up, Greg.”

Greg rubbed the side of his face. “Look, man, if you want to get this over with, please, just—”

“ _Alright_. I fucking get it, Greg. I’m not enjoying this any more than you are.” He clenched his jaw and focused on moving his hand in a steady rhythm, trying to pay attention to what Greg seemed to like, and at the same time working hard to ignore his reactions altogether so he wouldn’t have to think about them later.

He couldn’t bear to look at Greg’s face anymore—Greg was just sitting there, eyes round and eyebrows curved sweet above them, his lips taking on that pinkish blush as his breath quickened. So instead Tom stared at the buttons on his shirt, the bottom few undone, threads fraying from the lowest one.

The lube smelled sweet, like vanilla, and Tom was fucking salivating. It was all going to his head—the stale burn of Greg’s smoke in his throat, the ghost of the not-kiss on his mouth, the sweet scent of the lube, the soft sounds of Greg’s breath, the haunting blush of his cock in Tom’s hand.

He could blame the weed for this too, later: he shuffled back to half-kneel on the couch, gripped the base of Greg’s cock, and bent to take the head of it into his mouth. He felt Greg lean back under his hands, and Greg’s choked gasp at the sudden heat of Tom’s mouth went straight to his own dick.

The handjob had started to feel perfunctory, mechanical, but somehow this, his mouth on Greg’s cock, made sense to Tom, at least physically. This he could get into, and he didn’t have to figure out where to look while he did it. He’d basically paid his own dick for this lube; might as well enjoy it as best he could.

Distantly, just as Tom felt he was getting a comfortable rhythm down, he noticed Greg’s hand flapping at his shoulder, warning of his impending orgasm. Tom shook him off and bore down, gripping Greg’s hips almost angrily—furious at himself for letting things get this far out of bounds, for letting himself enjoy it this much, for giving Greg exactly what he wanted for himself, over and over again.

He tasted hot salt thick on his tongue and sat up in a rush, grasping Greg’s chin just as Greg had done to him half an hour before and pouring Greg’s cum like smoke into his mouth. He felt Greg’s lower lip soft and bruising between their teeth, but before he could pull away Greg’s hand was tight on the back of his neck. Greg’s throat worked under Tom’s palm, and when Tom opened his mouth he tasted vanilla and tang and burn.

Greg softened his lips against Tom’s, breathing into him and stealing kisses out of his mouth. Tom felt the stiffness melting out of his spine and slid his hand up into Greg’s hair. He was losing focus, losing himself in this, and then his attention snapped back into place.

He tore out of Greg’s grasp and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “That’s not the fucking agreement, Greg. Fuck off.”

Greg was already leaning forward into his space, hand back on his jaw. “But we don’t—there isn’t . . . Tom. Don’t. Please don’t,” he said. Tom was looking away, turning his face out of Greg’s hand, when Greg said: “I want this—you. Please. Let me touch you. I know—I think?—you want me to?”

Tom closed his eyes, and Greg rubbed his hands slow over his neck, his chest, slipping under his suspenders and pushing them off his shoulders. Greg had filed his dick away but left his pants undone, forgotten. He pressed his mouth above Tom’s collar, said, “I’m gonna load another bowl. Do you want a hit?” He leaned back to look at Tom, fiddling with the clasp of his suspenders at his waist.

Tom made a valiant attempt to sneer, to roll his eyes, to laugh Greg off as a stoner nobody. But he couldn’t form the words to turn him down, and sat there quiet, more interested than he wanted to admit in the orderly little jars and contraptions Greg worked with out of his heirloom stash box. He seemed so confident, so competent in this process Tom knew nothing about, and Tom was muddled in affront and arousal at feeling so left out, so left behind.

Then Greg was lifting that awfully phallic pipe to his mouth, his chin thrust forward in a way that accentuated his subtle jaw. Tom reached up and traced the stubble-rough skin there with a fingertip, and this time when Greg leaned into him, Tom closed his eyes and gripped Greg’s shoulder and inhaled as deep as he could.

Greg didn’t pull away, and Tom exhaled into the kiss, thin smoke drifting up between their faces. Greg unbuttoned his shirt so slowly Tom hardly noticed, but his breath caught when Greg slid his hands inside, down Tom’s chest, over his ribs. Tom fumbled with Greg’s shirt too, brain quiet except for a single thought screaming for more warmth, more skin.

Tom bit off an embarrassing whimper when Greg pressed their chests together bare, easing Tom to lie back. Greg somehow fit himself on the couch next to Tom, his face against Tom’s neck, and Tom forgot about everything else when he smelled vanilla, felt Greg’s hand warm and slick on his cock.

Greg worked him up and Tom dissociated, seeing the knuckled circle of Greg’s hand, which he’d been pining after for ages, not on Greg’s dick as usual but on his own, swallowing down pleasured gasps that came not from Greg’s mouth but his own. The dress shirt undone across Greg’s chest was one Tom had bought, the singed air in his lungs was air Greg had given him, the vanilla on his tongue bought by his own hand, passed to Greg’s body and back.

He needed Greg to trust him, needed Greg to be him, to be part of him, so that he could feel like he belonged to something. These were things Tom was not at all certain he deserved. But lying there entwined with Greg in more ways than he could count, Tom could almost believe he did deserve them.

It had been months since Tom had come in front of someone else, let alone someone new, and Tom was relieved Greg kept his face tucked discreetly away in his neck. Tom held on to his shoulder, his head, covering Greg’s ear in a feeble attempt to hide the vulnerable sounds that escaped his throat as he came hard in Greg’s hand.

Greg jostled off the couch, and Tom lay there out of breath, arm slung over his eyes against the overhead lights and the oncoming shame. But then Greg was back, wiping his face and his belly with a warm cloth. Greg sat on the floor, back against the couch, and Tom grimaced when he tossed the cloth under an end table.

“Gross, Greg.”

“Dude, like, I’ll get it. I just wanna sit for a minute.” He reached up and took Tom’s hand, pulled his arm down across his chest. “Are you still spending the night?”

“Obviously. You really think you can finagle your way out of giving me those papers with a single handy job, Gregory? I don’t fucking think so.”

“And this, uh, does this fall within the terms and conditions of your, like, thing? With Shiv?”

Tom shook his wrist out of Greg’s grip and jostled his head by the chin. “Of course it does. I mean . . . obviously, ah, it _should_. But, you know, it’s not set in stone, Greg. It is what it is, whatever it is.”

“No, sure. I just wanted to make sure, to check, if, like, this was going to be . . .”

“If this was going to be what, Greg? A _thing_?” He let Greg pull his arm back down around his chest.

“I mean, wasn’t it kind of already a thing?”

“Was it?” Tom asked.

“I thought—well, I guess it doesn’t really matter, per se.” Greg went quiet, and Tom didn’t respond. “But, like, I’m just wondering if this is going to be an ongoing, uh, liaison, perhaps?”

“Can’t we just let it be what it is, Greg?”

Greg gripped his arm tighter. “But what is it, Tom?”

Tom knew he was being difficult, and he hated himself for resisting Greg’s feeble attempts to delineate their relationship. It was just that the firmer the lines got, the more this felt like it could become a threat. To Shiv, to his job—the things that felt more and more like they were essential parts of Tom, even if they weren’t at a base level parts of _him_ at all.

Tom slid to the floor next to Greg, put his arm around his neck, fingers tracing his collarbone.

“Listen, Greg. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know if I’m ready to figure it out, and I know that sounds like I’m just waiting for the chance to fuck you over. But can you trust me? Can you trust me when I say I’m not going to fuck you over?”

“Yeah, Tom. Yeah. I trust you.” Greg turned and looked into Tom’s face, asked, “Do you—do you trust me?”

“Of course I do,” Tom said, and smiled. “To a point.”

“Good enough, I guess,” Greg said, and touched his face and kissed him.

Later, lying in Greg’s bed, Greg’s limbs slung across him, Tom stared up at the ceiling, brooding. As much as he wanted to believe destroying the last remaining Cruises papers would clear them for good, he knew the bodies were still out there, waiting to rise up from the dead and come for him—and for Greg too, since Tom had infected him.

He didn’t know if he’d be able to save them both; he just hoped that tenuous thread of trust would be enough to get them through it.

**Author's Note:**

> I got the original idea for this from a Tumblr post (which I’ve since lost) that posited Greg “making” (letting) Tom give him a handjob to ~soothe~ him after his stressful Cruises investigation interview. so if that was your post, thank you for the inspiration!
> 
> if you're into the Tom-buying-shit-for-Greg bit, you should read brandyalexanders2’s [easy tiger](https://archiveofourown.org/series/2011501) series, which is lush and delightful in every way.
> 
> the obnoxious quote I thought about while writing this: "Are 'being' and 'having' thoroughly inaccurate verbs in the twisted skein of desire, where having someone's body to touch and being that someone we're longing to touch are one and the same, just opposite banks on a river that passes from us to them, back to us and over to them again in this perpetual circuit where the chambers of the heart, like the trapdoors of desire, and the wormholes of time, and the false-bottomed drawer we call identity share a beguiling logic according to which the shortest distance between real life and the life unlived, between who we are and what we want, is a twisted staircase designed with the impish cruelty of M. C. Escher?" (from _Call Me by Your Name_ because of course it is. sometimes I also read other books 🙃)
> 
> I'm on Tumblr at [@van1lla-v1lla1n](https://van1lla-v1lla1n.tumblr.com/). come hang outttttt (and feel free to dm me about tags/content warnings)


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